


Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

by spacestationtrustfund



Series: come in from the cold [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Steve Rogers, Depression, Identity, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Steve Rogers vs. the 21st Century, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, What Makes Steve Happy, those tags were not intentionally related but let's be real here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 10:20:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19788871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: Okay, so maybe "we both have dead boyfriends, let's hook up" isn't the suavest line, but it's been a while since Sam's done something cataclysmically stupid, and besides, it's CaptainAmerica.Sam gets himself neck-deep in the neuroses of yet another fool-ass white boy.





	Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS NOT A STEVE/SAM FIC. Or, at least, if you’re looking for a fic where Steve/Sam is the endgame, this is not that fic. This is more of a Sam/Bad Decisions fic, ft. some good old Steve/Angst. Takes place immediately after the scene in the VA where Sam asks, “What makes you happy?” and Steve says, “I don’t know.”
> 
> Title from Marvin Gaye. It was that or "Let's Get It On."

“There’s got to be something that makes you happy,” Sam said. "Besides your future career in the UFC, I mean."

They were still standing in the wood-paneled hallway of the VA office building. The ceiling felt too low; the decor made Sam feel like the entire complex was stuck somewhere in the 70s, wood panels and argyle-print couches and all. It had the same shitty high school gymnasium chairs that scuffed up the floor and made horrible scraping noises. There were hackneyed jokes to be made about the vets being stuck in the Vietnam era or what the fuck ever, just like the building itself, probably.

“Well, the history books all say I liked baseball,” Rogers said, “and art."

"Hey, that's a start."

That earned him a half shrug. "Haven’t been able to draw much since I—got back, though. Tried sketching Peggy—Agent Carter—a couple times, but it didn’t seem right. I think the Smithsonian’s still got some of my old sketchbooks on display. Natasha said, I could probably get ’em back if I tried, but—”

“What the hell, man, it’s _your_ stuff, they shouldn’t even have it in the first place,” Sam said, sticking his hands in his pockets. “I mean, sure it's a _museum_ , they're kinda notorious for taking other people’s shit without asking, and raising hell if you want it back, but they’d probably make an exception for Captain America.” Patron saint of skinhead neo-nationalist masculinity, he didn't say. Steve didn't exactly need to be reminded of his warped cultural legacy; the poor guy had more than enough on his plate already.

Sure enough, Steve looked exhausted, weary down to the bone. “I’m sick of people making exceptions for me.”

“Hey, I’m not _that_ kind of therapist,” Sam told him. "No overstuffed couch and healing crystals to put your chakras back in retrograde, or whatever. And hey, friends are for friends, not therapy. Spill."

Christ, he should’ve thought to sit down before he started babbling on about feng shui or something. At this point it was probably too late to grab a chair without making it awkward and scaring Rogers away like he was some sort of overgrown pigeon.

"Okay," Steve said. "Good. I— That's good."

“Anybody tell you about the Dodgers yet?”

For a moment, Steve’s face actually lit up. “ _Yeah_ ,” he said vehemently, “yeah, Clint—Agent Barton that is, he showed me how to use his computer and stuff, and we were going to see a game, but—” He smiled, but it didn’t look like a fond memory. “I stayed with Nat, Natasha I mean, for a while after I... you know."

Sam was pretty sure he could guess. "Woke up?" he ventured, and Rogers nodded.

"Yeah... woke up. I think she threatened Fury into agreeing to let me stay with her and Barton over in Bed-Stuy, actually. Stayed with them until I moved down here.”

“Yeah, she’s a piece of work all right,” said Sam. “Got a great taste in expensive cars, though.”

That got a quiet, surprised sound in response, like Steve had tried to laugh without quite remembering how. “Stark tried to show off some of his fancy toys and gadgets to her one time, trying to impress her I think, and she just listened to his whole spiel, smiling and quiet like you know how she gets, and then when he was done she told him exactly where he’d gone wrong, and what the right answers were.”

“Oh man, to be a fly on _that_ wall,” Sam said.

Rogers made a face like he'd tasted something sour.

"Wait," Sam said. "Do you know what that idiom—?"

"I'm not a dope," Steve said.

"I know you're not," Sam said.

Steve's mouth twitched. "Okay."

"I wasn't tryna say that y— Hey, don’t think you got out of this conversation by distracting me with your guilt tripping, or all that sweet talk about girls and cars, Rogers! We’ll continue Operation Make Cap Happy, mark my words.”

“Oh, that’s how it is?”

“You bet your lily-white ass that’s how it is,” Sam confirmed. He'd figured out around when the guy lapped him for the third time in a row that Captain America had the propensity to be an asshole.

They walked together towards the door. It was bright as all hell outside, and Sam fished in his pocket for his sunglasses, wincing. Beside him, Rogers looked like he was regretting not bringing a pair.

Had sunglasses even existed in 1945?

It would probably be insensitive to ask.

Anyway.

He could always Google it later, or ask his Momma. If she didn’t smack him for insinuating she was getting on in years, she’d be more than happy to talk about her own mother’s childhood, growing up on a humid Louisiana bayou.

Fuck, Rogers was the same age as his _Nana_. Sam still couldn’t wrap his head fully around the fact that the guy stood next to him was any older than 28, maybe 30 if he was pushing it. "He sure aged well for a white boy," his Momma had told him, the first time Sam had facetimed her, panicky and awestruck, desperately needing to tell someone, anyone, that he’d just met Captain America. He’d _gone jogging with_ Captain America. He’d shaken his hand and invited him to visit the VA’s therapy group. It was like being sixteen again, in the early aughts, walking past the JROTC poster in the hall (MAKE YOUR COUNTRY PROUD! - PROTECT AND SERVE - US ARMY) and seeing Captain America’s face emblazoned next to the list of enlistment websites, GOARMY.COM and that sort of thing.

The guy hadn’t even known what websites _were_. It would have been like sticking Uncle Sam in a commercial for StarkTech.

“Thanks for inviting me here,” Rogers said.

He glanced over at Sam, brow furrowed, and Sam tried desperately to look like he hadn’t just been thinking of his awkward teenage identity crisis slash sexual awakening. Riley used to give him mad flak for this exact sort of shit.

"Yeah, no big," he said. "Door's open anytime, you know that."

Rogers said, “I— don’t think I’m ready for the group meetings. Not yet. But it was... nice, to see that there are other people who are able to get the help they need, and without judgement. That’s something good about— now.”

“I mean, there’s still stigma,” Sam admitted. “I try not to let it get to me, y’know? It’s not like I could ever forget I’m a black guy who works as a therapist; I’ve had my share of encounters with vets who just treat me like shit on account of that, but it’s not like _I_ can change. We all deal with this shit differently, but we all gotta cope somehow. Call it shell shock, PTSD, whatever your terminology is, it’s something we all carry. You can stick it in a fancy little rolling suitcase, but you still gotta carry it with you.”

Steve did smile, then. “We didn’t have wheels on our luggage, you know.”

“Miracles of the 21st century,” Sam said. “We’ve got Nutella, and we’ve got CBT. We’ve got credit cards, and we’ve got nuclear bombs. Like it or not, the future is gonna stay the future. If you’re gonna be stuck with the whole goddamn century on your shoulders, the least I can do is help you pick out a more comfortable backpack.”

Steve hunched his shoulders like he was trying to shrink into himself. “Not to belabor the metaphor, but— even the shitty backpacks are gonna be a hell of a lot more expensive, these days.”

“Hush your white boy ass, I know you got all that backpay and whatever,” Sam said, waving a hand. “Hey, you know how weird it is to hear you swear?"

Steve gave him a Captain America Is Disappointed In You Look. "I was in the _army_."

"I mean, I remember watching those old propaganda reels in like— high school, and shit... I guess I just never imagined I'd hear Captain America say 'fuck.'"

"Tony made a big deal of it, the first time," Steve said. He shrugged. "It was all like, 'Cap said a no-no word! Cap did a swear!' and well, I guess I just didn't want to deal with alla that shit. So I kinda played into the whole uptight thing a bit, after that."

"Huh," Sam said. "And to think they always made out like you were some paragon of virtue or somethin’ like that.”

“Ha,” said Steve. “I haven’t been an anything of virtue since 1934, sorry to disappoint.”

“Yeah, not to ruin the mood, but I’m pretty sure you just crushed the dreams of about thirty million people hoping to take your virginity,” Sam admitted.

Rogers looked apprehensive. “I, uh. That ship kind of— already sailed. A long time ago.”

“Man, would it be weird if I said I wanted details? Never mind, it’s weird, don’t answer that.” Smooth, Wilson. Very smooth. “Still, you probably shouldn’t announce to the world that you’ve been, I dunno, going out club hopping or... downloaded Grindr or something,” and fuck fuck _fuck_ he should have said Tinder, did Rogers even _know_ what Grindr was? He couldn't be _that_ culturally literate yet, could he?

Sam spared a brief moment of thought to pity the poor overworked SHIELD intern who had presumably been tasked with introducing Captain America to the modern luxuries of gay hookup apps.

“Yeah, well, you know me,” Steve said, deadpan, “insufferable skirt chaser."

"Sure, I'd buy that," Sam said. "It's the tagline for your late-seventies biopic, actually—they got Kurt Russell to play Cap, if you can believe that level of schlocky camp..."

Rogers looked caught-out and uncomfortable, not to mention bewildered, like he had no idea who Kurt Russell was (which was fair enough). "They made a _lot_ of Cap movies," Sam hedged.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "I think Natasha's planning to make me watch all of 'em."

"Even the skirt-chaser one? I gotta warn you, some scenes do get pretty graphic," Sam said. He'd watched the Kurt Russell movie on VHS twenty years after it had come out, and had then been remiss to explain why the sight of seventies Kurt Russell getting all hot and heavy with some blonde one-off model made him feel Things with a capital T.

"I mean, Natasha told me about— about the blue movies, and all that, anyway, and it’s not like I didn’t know what _sex_ was, based on the amount of eight-pagers the fellas had, back home. Used to trade ’em to see which was the dirtiest. And then, during the war... it was all a lotta guys had, anyhow. Let me tell you, watchin’ Disney films is a bit different after your buddy’s showed you his picture of Mickey up to the ears in Minnie Mouse’s pussy. Morita’s were the worst, I think.”

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"I really don't know how to react to that," Sam admitted.

Rogers chuckled. "Neither did I. Neither did I! Like I said, you know me—can’t keep it in my pants, that’s Captain America’s real legacy."

“Soooo,” Sam said, joking, “we goin' to your place or mine?” but Rogers just looked pained, and a little relieved.

“Yours,” he said. “I think, I— yeah.”

Sam gaped at him for a moment before admitting to himself that he hadn’t misheard. He thought he could feel, literally physically _feel_ , an alternate timeline version of himself during his college years spontaneously cream his pants. He’d hesitated for a second too long, and now Rogers was turning red and opening his mouth like he was about to backpedal, and Sam was literally going to die of—embarrassment, probably.

Clearly, he should have thought longer about the Grindr situation.

“Hey, I wasn’t saying _no_ , it’s just— that doesn’t really jive with the image everyone’s got of you as some straight-laced paragon of virtue with a stick up his ass, huh,” and _that_ phrasing was a poor choice, because Rogers was turning even redder, and Sam, horribly, felt himself headed the same way, like a high school freshman working up the nerve to tell their crush they liked them. Except he was an allegedly functioning former PJ counselor in his thirties, and his crush was Captain America, who was standing in front of him.

Still.

Somehow.

Straight-laced, he thought, and had to bite down hard on his tongue to keep the wheezing laughter from escaping. How was this his _life_.

“Hey, c’mon,” he said. “You came here on your bike, right? I’ll text you the address.”

It was awkward again when they both arrived at Sam’s place. Sam was about ninety-four percent the owner of a moderately sized house—an actual house, so suck it, he owned a house in outer DC, _and people said he ain’t grown_ —and even shitty suburban DC still beat out stagnating in fucking _Virginia_ until the end of days, really, so he could live with the water damage and wimpy WiFi connection and occasional silverfish that scuttled across the bathroom floor and absolutely did not scare the living daylights out of him at 2 a.m., because he was grown, God damn it.

“Uh,” Sam said eloquently, fumbling his keys, “is there something in particular you wanted to, like... do?”

Rogers was hovering in the hallway like a big blond Macy’s Thanksgiving balloon. Come to think of it, Sam was pretty sure the parade _had_ a Captain America float.

“I guess, um,” Rogers said. The tips of his ears were bright pink. Sam kind of wanted to bite them. “I mean, I was thinking we would... you know...”

“Man, don’t take this the wrong way,” Sam said, “but, have you uh, have you done this before?”

Steve didn’t make eye contact, but there was a bright pink flush high on his cheekbones. “Yeah,” he muttered, “yeah, just. Before.”

College Sam would never had believed his ears if he’d been told that, in a few short years, he’d be discussing _cruising_ with Captain God damn America, of all people. To be fair to his past self, College Sam was still juggling actually getting that engineering degree, supporting his folks without letting them know he wasn’t just buying their groceries for the fuck of it, coming to terms with the fact that he liked dick as more than an awkward teenage fumbling, and experimenting with half the underclassmen in his major. It had been one hell of a four-year period. He’d blinked awake one day and he was stood on a stage with his diploma and wearing a stupid itchy gown, and then the next day it felt like, he was stationed in Afghanistan and his CO was talking about something called EXO-7 codename Project FALCON, an experimental program he was a candidate for. Blink of an eye and everything was different.

Well, shit, he thought. Here you are again, Sam Wilson, getting your heart all mucked up in some white boy’s tragic past, because you never learned how _not_ to fuck the guys you should really be counseling instead.

Except this wasn’t one of College Sam’s neurotic boyfriends, or the situational "my girlfriend isn’t here but the queer kid is" boot camp era hookups, or _Riley_ , shit, this was Captain America, for fuck's sake—who was, to be fair, a guy who’d jokingly been on Riley’s and his Fuck It List since they were high school seniors butting heads in JROTC.

Wasn’t _Sam’s_ fault the recruitment posters really Did Things to the dude’s thighs. It was like, the _contour_. Whatever that meant.

Maybe it was because Sam tried to fix people instead of help them (he was working on it, God damn it). Maybe it was because he’d never listened to his Momma when she told him not to stick it in crazy (or at least not before Riley— she’d full-on fawned over Riley, made him call her Darlene and patted his cheek every time he came over for dinner, and kept bugging Sam about _makin’ that boy an honest man_ , even when Sam covered his face with a pillow and wailed—)

Captain goddamn America. Sam was still half convinced he was going to wake up at any moment and hear his Momma yelling that he’d overslept again, the chores ain’t gone get themselves done, come _on_ and get that lazy ass downstairs—

“I guess there probably weren’t many options, back then,” he offered, scrabbling for the lost thread of the conversation again.

“No, there was— there were options,” Steve admitted.

Christ, it was like pulling teeth.

"Yeah?" said Sam, prompting.

“It’s not like I could just hop over to Saint George’s without everyone knowing about it, but even in the Heights there were always places, and we— we weren’t far from the docks, y’know, and then during the war...” Steve shrugged. “Everyone knew, but of course no one _said_ anything. If it was a problem, they didn’t let on. I wasn’t exactly going to every drag ball in the area, but sometimes we’d go up to Harlem and double-date with a coupla girls, and that way they could have their fun, and then me an’— well.”

Sam winced. Probably still all hung up on someone who'd been dead for decades, he thought. Christ alive, this probably _was_ gonna be a spectacularly bad idea.

“It’s okay to talk about it, now,” he said, cautious. “I mean, obviously some people’ll give you shit, but they’d give you shit even if you were a Confederate-supporting gun-toting dip-chewing scab, so hiding it’s probably gonna be worse.”

“I saw with the— the marriage equality thing,” Steve said.

Back in 2011, one of the few times the paps and press had managed to corner the newly thawed Rogers without his near-perpetual cavalry of the Black Widow—or, depending on the location and purpose, a handful of heavily armed SHIELD agents— they’d wrangled a few responses out him with their endless shouted questions. _Captain Rogers, what would you say is the most disorienting thing about adjusting to the 21st century? Captain Rogers, how do you feel about our current administration? Captain Rogers, are you planning to rejoin active duty? Captain Rogers, what are your thoughts on the proposed Marriage Equality Act?_ Sam vividly remembered seeing the film crew’s closeup of Rogers’s face, looking drawn and haunted.

“I... I think people should be allowed to... love who they love,” Cap had said—he was frowning, confused, and who wouldn't have been—and then a squadron of black-clothed SHIELD personnel had appeared and quickly bundled him into a nondescript black escalade.

It had been all over the news for the next several months (HAS CAPTAIN AMERICA BETRAYED AMERICAN VALUES? CAPTAIN AMERICA: TRAITOR? or CAPTAIN AMERICAN'T, which had made Sam laugh until his stomach hurt), and Steve Rogers hadn’t been spotted in public without the Black Widow as his escort for nearly half a year.

“Okay,” said Sam, determined. He set his keys down on the kitchen counter, and kicked off his sneakers. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, or you’re not ready for, okay? I won’t pressure you, I promise. If you want to stop at any point, just tell me, and we’ll stop. You're calling the shots here.”

Going full counselor on the guy whose pony you were trying to cop a ride on probably wasn’t the very best of ideas, but frankly Sam didn’t give a shit at the moment. He was _mature_ , damn it, he could think with his brain and not his dick, no matter what College Sam would have done.

Steve shifted awkwardly. “Maybe just— kissing is nice.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “You wanna try it?”

“Shut up,” Steve mumbled.

His ears were bright pink again. He twitched a little, like he couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands, then stepped forwards and kissed Sam without preamble.

Sam was intending to be smooth, he really was, but as soon as Steve touched him, Sam’s brain promptly short-circuited. Somewhere in the back of his head he could feel his parallel-universe self screaming his damn head off. Somewhere in the forefront of his brain he tried to actually focus on what he was doing—putting one hand on Steve’s chest, tilting his head to the side, opening his mouth when Steve pushed a little harder, leaning into the kiss—

Steve pulled back, and said, “Would you believe that was technically my first kiss in seventy years?”

“Man, shut _up_ ,” Sam said, and grabbed Steve’s stupid grandpa polo collar and tugged him back down for another kiss.

They ended up on the couch. Sam thought about being embarrassed about the weird old floral print from the eighties (which was probably where the couch itself was from), but hell, Steve was from the _forties_ , everything old in Sam’s house was probably futuristic. Even his shitty old microwave would be high-tech junk. It was simultaneously the most and least self conscious he’d ever felt when having a guy over.

Steve nipped his ear and pushed him back into the couch cushion, forceful enough to knock the breath out of Sam’s lungs. He huffed and smacked Steve’s hip. “Let a fella breathe, c’mon,” he wheezed, distracted by the way Steve was scraping his teeth lightly along the side of Sam’s neck.

“Shit, sorry,” Steve mumbled, shifting away immediately. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Last time I did this, I was— well, you’ve probably seen my medical files.”

“’S fine,” Sam said, because the alternative was saying _yeah, and I also jerked off thinking about your ass in Spanx when I was fifteen_ , and he wasn’t _that_ much of a perv. Probably. Almost definitely. It was still a little bit weird. “Seventy years in the freezer probably doesn’t help a man’s libido, huh?”

Steve hummed thoughtfully. “Well, Natasha had a field day explaining what Viagra is, so.”

Sam tried valiantly not to choke on his own tongue for a few moments. “Cool. Great,” he croaked. “Awesome.”

“Hey, c’mere,” Steve said, and pulled Sam on top of him, in between his legs, Steve’s strong hands on his hips. “This okay?”

“Fuck, yeah, believe me, you do _not_ need to ask,” Sam managed.

Steve just gave him his most earnest face. “Consent is important, Sam,” he said. One of his hands slid down from Sam’s hip to his ass, thumb hooking in the waistband of his jeans.

“Consent _is_ important, but trust me, man, you could do pretty much anything to me and I’d be cool with it,” Sam assured him. “As long as you don’t plan to impale me or some other bullshit, I’ll try anything once, y’know, so go for it.”

“Good news,” Steve said. “I’m definitely not gonna _impale_ you.”

Sam shifted his hips, enjoying the way Steve’s mouth fell open slightly when he moved. “Well, _something_ wants to impale me, all right,” he said.

“Oh my God, shut up,” Steve protested. His ears had gone all pink again. It was unfairly adorable.

“See, I’d normally say _make me_ , but in this case I think you wouldn’t even have to try to m— ah, okay then, oh my _God_ ,” Sam said, and dropped his head onto Steve’s shoulder. “It’s cool if you’re not ready, but fuck, do you wanna maybe move to the bedroom?”

Steve just hummed and said, “If you want to,” and sucked on Sam’s neck again until Sam wrestled himself free.

 _Bastard_. Unfair sneaky bastard.

Sam was determined to bludgeon his way through the awkwardness if he had to. It was a Wilson family trait, God damn it. “I’m— I’m clean,” he said, dithering before grabbing the mostly full box of condoms from the top dresser drawer. “If it matters, I mean. Got tested just last month.”

Steve wrinkled his forehead. “I— don’t even think I could _get_ VD,” he said. “But I didn’t, before, I mean, so—”

“We’re still using one of these,” Sam said firmly, holding up the box. “Cause no offense, man, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to clean up afterwards that way, and I’m not letting no super-jizz in my ass, who knows what that’d do to my poor unenhanced body or whatever.”

Steve cracked up. “Never had a problem with _that_ before,” he said, and tugged his shirt out from the waistband of his weird old man pants. “And actually I was thinking of, uh—”

“No, hey, that’s cool,” Sam said quickly, “you wanna fuck me, you want me to fuck you, I got no preference, got it? Hell, I’d be fine with a coupla half hearted handjobs as long as it’s what you want, man, I’m not trying to make you do anything you don’t wanna do.”

“I _want_ you to fuck me,” Steve said—he looked very stubborn and brave, for some reason—and well, that did things to Sam in all sorts of places, specifically his dick. Rogers had unbuttoned his shirt and was pulling it off, and Sam had seen a hell of a lot of him back when Steve had been wearing that skintight number to go jogging in, but this was different, seeing it up close, being allowed to _touch_. “I want— just, I don’t want to have to think about all— all this _stuff_ for a while, I just want— Please.”

“I’m,” Sam licked his lips, “uh. Whatever you want. Yeah.”

Clothes, he thought. He should probably take his clothes off. Steve had sat on the bed to take his shoes and socks off, and Christ, he looked like he was _glistening_. Sam was going to call his Momma and tell her he was going back to _church_.

“Cool,” Steve said, looking relieved. He tucked his socks neatly inside his shoes and arranged his shoes neatly underneath the bed, which made Sam’s brain want to give him a hug about just as much as his dick wanted to get the show on the road already, please and thank you. “I— Thank you.”

“Mother of God, don’t thank _me_ ,” Sam said, fervently, and finally, _finally_ , got his hands on All That. Not thinking about stuff for a while? Sam could do not thinking about stuff for a while. Sam could teach a God damn master's level class in not thinking about stuff for a while. “C’mon, get your pants off, I wanna go down on you first.”

“If you say anything about the serum and my dick, I will walk out of here,” Steve threatened. His ears were still all pink.

“Hey now, I wasn’t gonna— aw fuck, that’s pretty funny actually,” Sam complained. “Fuck, now I’m just gonna be _thinking_ about it—”

“So stop thinking about it,” Steve said.

“’S not that easy, dumbass,” Sam started to say, but then Steve got his fly undone and pants off, and Sam forgot why he was arguing. Fuck, those recruitment posters had not been exaggerating. Sam wanted between those thighs _now_.

Steve said, “You could, just—”

“I vote that we both stop talking,” Sam said, and shoved him back onto the bed.

It was still kind of surreal, and not just because it was Captain America. Well, it was _Steve_ , which wasn't really the same thing.

"Um," Steve said. "Did you still want—d'you want to use—?" He gestured eloquently towards the condoms.

Sam shrugged. "It's fine by me either way," he said. "Just, warn me or something? I'm not really into swallowing, usually."

"I will," Steve said, looking poleaxed, then, "oh my _God_ ," when Sam finally touched him, which made Sam's ego start jitterbugging.

"Okay," said Sam. "Just let me know if you don't like something, okay?"

"Yeah," Steve said faintly. His eyes were half closed. "Yeah."

"Cool," Sam said, and got to it.

It had been a minute since he'd done this, which surprisingly didn't make it any weirder. He thought, maybe it was like riding a bicycle, and then had to pull back so he didn't choke himself trying not to laugh. Sam's days of picking up random guys had ended after Riley—but then again, this wasn't really just another random guy. Sam tried to keep his technique straightforward; he _liked_ doing this sort of thing, and Steve was responsive in a vindicating sort of way, even if he didn't really make much noise. Probably a product of growing up in a different century, Sam thought, which was possibly the least sexy thing his brain could have suggested while he was trying to suck the guy's dick. When he'd said he liked older men, he didn't really mean like _this_ , not really.

"Sam, Sam," Steve was saying, pushing at Sam's jaw. Sam pulled off, keeping one hand in place. Steve's face was flushed, his mouth open slightly, and he looked like any other dude off the street. It was both reassuring and not at all reassuring at the same time. "I— I don't want—"

"You good?"

"Yeah, _yeah_ , just—" Steve's hand twitched. "I don't—you said you didn't want—"

Sam bit the inside of Steve's thigh lightly. "You still want me to fuck you?"

"Yeah," Steve said, "yeah, I just— I can't—sorry—" and came all over Sam's shoulder and neck.

Sam stroked him through it, then sat up and ran his fingers along Steve's hipbone, soothing. "Hey, it's okay, it's— can I make _one_ joke?"

"Ugh," Steve said. He looked mortified.

"Just," Sam said, "I'm hoping the serum affected your refractory period, because—"

"Oh my God shut _up_ ," Steve said.

Sam wiped himself off with his discarded shirt, then tossed it back onto the floor. His house, his rules. "Hey, man, it's a good thing," he said, reaching for the condom box. "This is supposed to be fun, I don't care what we do as long as we both enjoy it. We cool?"

Steve nodded.

"Cool," Sam said. "Just abort mission if you're not feeling it, it's chill. No shame in needing some time, man."

"Would it be weird if I said the thing that's the most difficult to get used to is that the—" Steve tilted his head towards the condom Sam was still holding. "They look different, I mean."

"What, you didn't have Trojans in the nineteen forties?"

"Sure we did," Steve muttered. "Just, I mostly used 'em to keep the rifles from fouling up."

"Uh," Sam said. "Please tell me that's not a euphemism—"

" _No_ ," Steve said, looking horrified, "I mean— _waterproof_ and all— I remember Bu— uh, some buddies of mine had to ask for more when we were on leave, cause they'd used up their rations protecting their weapons and all that."

Sam raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. "I guess that's not something people do when your battalion is TARFU in the middle of the desert eating MREs and fried scorpions," he said. "Anyway, not that discussing the many benefits of multipurpose condoms isn't the sexiest pillow talk in the world, but—"

Steve said, "Yeah, I think we should—"

"Go back to the whole shutting up thing? You're a genius," Sam said.

“Sooo,” Sam said, after. “Who’s your fella?”

Steve blinked. “I— I don’t have anyone,” he said, sounding a little lost and a lot confused. Sam waved a hand like he could evaporate the weird twisty sad feeling in his chest.

“No, I meant. You left someone back in the forties, didn't you? Tell me about him.”

“Oh,” said Steve, looking stricken. “I. He— he didn’t make it.”

“Shit, man,” Sam said sympathetically. “He a soldier like you?”

Steve shrugged. “Somethin’ like that, I mean yeah. He was the only guy who’d looked at me twice, back when I was. Y’know, before all this.” He gestured eloquently at his chest. “Had my back when I needed it, even when I swore up and down I didn’t. We both enlisted, after Pearl Harbor, I guess, but I— Well, you know that story. He got in. Didn’t make it out.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Sam said carefully.

He had already got the sense that Steve wasn't exactly going to explain any further about the story Sam was supposed to know. Sam usually tried damn hard to keep his work life out of his bed, but sometimes it was just inevitable. Besides, he thought wryly, it’s not like he’d _expected_ to end up in bed with Captain goddamn America. Or Steve, either. They really weren't the same thing.

Steve made a quiet, angry noise. “It _was_. I should have—I could have saved him, but I wasn’t... fast enough, or strong enough, or— The serum was supposed to make everything better, but in the end I still couldn’t take care of—what I loved. All I had to do was hold him. But. He died, and after that I suppose I didn’t have a lot to stick around for.”

“Man, hit me if this is too personal, but,” Sam said, “I always thought you and Director Carter were, you know—”

“Aw, _Peggy_ ,” Steve said, and his smile looked more genuine than Sam had seen from him yet. “Peggy was—Peggy _is_ , she’s just great, she was great, I would have— well, I was gonna marry her. After the war I mean, assuming she’d have put up with me for that long. I asked her to marry me once I— _now_ I mean. And she just laughed until she cried. Said she’d been handling my bullshit for comin' on eighty years and it was high time I learned how to carry my own problems.”

“One hell of a woman,” Sam said.

“She _is_.” Steve’s whole face had lit up with a soft, comfortable glow. “She’s perfect.”

“So, uh,” Sam said, “how’d that work, then? You and her, and you and your fella, I mean.”

Steve chewed on his lip. “Pretty much how’d you imagine, I figure,” he said, which was _not_ an image Sam was expecting to try valiantly not to picture.

“You said you’d have married her!”

“Well, yeah, I _would_ have,” Steve said, like it was the obvious thing to do, like anyone would have even considered another option. “Not like _we_ could’ve got hitched—probably never would’ve _thought_ about it. I’d have married Peggy, and he’d have married I don’t know, _someone_ , and we’d live next door to each other and raise our kids and it woulda been _fine_.”

“Whoa, dude, I ain’t saying it wouldn’t have been,” Sam said. “Just a little surprised, is all.”

He got the sense that this was a conversation Steve had been accustomed to having, with—Carter, or his unnamed partner, or both of them at once, _Jesus_.

Steve looked at him for a moment, then scrunched up his face and shut his eyes tightly. “Yeah. Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I know you didn’t—mean it like that. I know things are different now.”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay," Sam said, trying to step lightly. "You know it's okay to like girls _and_ guys, right?"

Steve snorted in a way that probably should have been unattractive. "I thought I was dreaming the first time I found out what the word _bisexual_ meant. Back—back then, it just wasn't—look, either you were a queer, or you weren't. If you weren't, didn't mean you couldn't go down to the docks and find someone to fuck, but at least you weren't a fairy if you didn't wanna take it from another guy, y'know? I mean, I lived a coupla blocks from Middagh. It's not like I didn't know about any of what was goin' on over there, and sometimes there were just—things you hadta do, for the money, or for. Well. And then once we shipped out, with the other fellas, well... it doesn't make you a fairy if you were just helpin' each other out. 'S long as you don't _make_ it queer. But yeah, sometimes I wanna go back just to scream at everyone that it's not... that I'm not, you know. Fucked in the head."

Sam said, "Jesus, and I thought the history books were exaggerating when they said you were Catholic."

"Fuck," Steve said, and started laughing, a weird wheezing sort of laughter that wouldn't be out of place on a prepubescent gopher. His accent had slipped back into something Sam had never heard before. " _Fuck_. God, I was the shittiest Irish Catholic queer in alla New _York_ , I can't believe people really think I was some sorta—a—a paragon of virtue, or a—just, fuck alla that bullshit."

"At least you've got words for it now, I guess," Sam offered.

Steve shrugged, eyebrows dipping inwards. "Bit too late for everyone else though."

"Yeah?" Sam said.

"I mean." Steve made a truncated movement, like he'd started to shrug his shoulders then stopped halfway. "It doesn't do much good for, uh, for any of the fellas I knew back then, since they're not exactly the ones stuck in the—future."

There was so much to unpack from that one sentence that Sam's old supervisor from back when he was mostly still working through his own shit would have cried tears of therapist-y joy. She would have had a field day just dissecting the single word _stuck_.

It didn't really seem like the right time to bring up the idea of actually getting some serious therapy, though.

Neutral statements, Dr. Sejeong had loved to remind him.

"Have you told anyone else any of this?" Sam asked. He knew the answer even before Steve was shaking his head.

"Who else would I've told? Everyone's already got this image in their heads of who they think Captain America has gotta be. You think anybody wants to hear about the guy wearing the mask? They stuck it on someone else while I was outta commission, cause it doesn't matter what's underneath as long as people still think the A stands for America. Poor sucker got to carry on the torch for a little while before it burned him right up."

"That doesn't mean you can't tell anyone how you're feeling. You don’t have to carry all this alone, you know,” Sam said.

He was, of course, thinking of Riley, of the impossible weight of the messy, decaying ghost of a friend you couldn’t save, of the way letting your feet drag in the mud only weighed you down further. He was thinking of the dizzying rush of letting go and knowing the ripcord was there and the parachute would catch you, dropping into freefall with your stomach turning somersaults, the wind tearing a joyous sound from your throat. And then the nauseous spiral of smoke and metal when Riley went down. He’d screamed, once, before the sputtering wings had given in completely and combusted upon impact. It would have been different, if there had been a body. But there hadn't been really anything left to bury.

Sam hadn’t been fast enough; he hadn’t saved him. He was going to have to live with the weight of that knowledge for the rest of his life.

And Steve just smiled, the sad, crooked little smile that said he was resigned to face whatever it was he was facing.

“No,” he said. “No, I think I kinda do.”

**Author's Note:**

> [History of sunglasses](http://www.glasseshistory.com/glasses-inventor/who-invented-sunglasses/), [fly on the wall](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/139600.html), [history of condoms](https://spafe.com.au/history-of-condoms/), [eight-pagers](https://muscleheaded.wordpress.com/2016/09/27/vintage-8-pagers/) [link NSFW]
> 
> Depending on whether you prefer comics or MCU “canon,” Steve was somewhere between 22 and 28 when he went under. I could be wrong, but I don’t recall Sam ever being given a specific age in any canon. Anthony Mackie was 36 in 2014; I like to headcanon Sam as in his early 30s anyway, so let’s just assume it’s something like that.
> 
> The reservoir tip on modern condoms wasn’t added until the 1950s. During WWII, (male) soldiers were issued condom rations, which were then frequently repurposed to prevent guns from being damaged by inclement weather. And yes, Trojans were around during the 1940s, although they—like every other brand of contraceptive—were sold as a protection against “disease” until the late 1950s. The advertising ban on condoms was lifted the same year Steve was born (1918). If you’re now thinking that I spent way too much time researching the history of contraceptives, you’re... probably right.


End file.
